where orders emerge

No Longer Slaves to Petty 18th-century Notions of Individual Rights

Robert Samuelson observes that “Every advanced society, including the United States, has a welfare state. Though details differ, their purposes are similar: to support the unemployed, poor, disabled and aged” (“Greece and the welfare state in ruins,” Feb. 22). True, but incomplete.

The founder of the modern welfare state, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, wanted, as he said, “to bribe the working classes” into devotion to the German state. What better way to ensure that families are willing to send ample supplies of their young men off to die for the Fatherland?

If Mr. Samuelson is correct that welfare ‘entitlements’ now threaten to bankrupt governments around the globe, we persons whose puny individual needs are nothing as compared those of the state had better beware.